Today, in this digital age, understanding SEO is necessary to run a successful marketing agency or online business at the same time it is also important that you understand the SEO Mistakes that you must avoid. If you want to drive traffic to your site and increase sales, you have to always update yourself with the ever-changing search engine algorithms.
But while keeping up with the SEO demands, online marketing decisions make some critical blunders that destroy SEO rankings. These blunders can take a huge toll on online business which can take a lot of time to recover.
To help you avoid bad decisions in SEO we have listed 15 common SEO mistakes below which you must avoid:
- Ignoring Your ‘Google My Business’ Listing
One critical SEO error that SEO professionals make is that they do not claim or properly manage Google My Business listings. With Google continuing to place importance on “near me” searches, the single biggest opportunity for small businesses is to claim their location, provide all info and answer questions that come in.
2. Only Focusing On On-Site SEO
Many businesses still practice only on-page SEO. Optimizing your website is a major component to ranking but off-page strategies are still as much as important. Online marketers must create engaging content for other websites as well. It is important to place content on other websites that are keyword rich and have links directing to your website
3. Overlooking Page Titles And Meta Descriptions
It is important to fix your page titles and add meta descriptions for search engines to grasp your website. Most website CMS systems can change this by default but are normally overlooked when a small business owner is building their website
4. Not Running Regular Website Audits
Monitoring the website’s performance from the client’s and search engine’s point of view is very important. Finding out about user-friendly navigation, loading time and easy access to relevant information is essential for your visitors as well as search engines. By auditing your website you can examine what needs improvement.
5. Leaving Old URL Structures in Place When Redesigning a Site
A common mistake that some SEO professionals make is that they revamp a website without redirecting traffic from old URLs to new ones. Online marketers can make use of a 301 map that maps old URLs to a new URL. If you change the URL of a highly trafficked page with informing, you may lose that SEO traffic.
6. Don’t Avoid Placing Important Text in Images
It is easy to make something look nice with an image but also make sure you add alt text to that image. Search algorithms look for text inside an image so putting text inside images helps your images have better chances of getting indexed on Google search results.
7. Not Adding Fresh, High-Quality Content
Some businesses and websites don’t have a blog page on their website. Make sure that all your blog posts are of quality with a healthy balance of correct keyword to attain higher rankings and more conversions.
8. Buying Backlinks
Many businesses still buy backlinks as they may be typically buying banks of backlinks from flagged sites. You must know that Google does not like websites buying links from other sites. It is better to earn them as Google appreciate websites with high authority that have quality traffic.
9. Building Content Specifically For Algorithms
Discovering errors requires focused attention on what is working. Stop building for algorithms instead tries to incorporate the content strategy that will give you a competitive advantage and drive the targeted interest you desire.
10. Falling Behind On SEO Trends
Search engine optimization will be heard as long as search engines but make sure that you don’t stick to the same SEO marketing strategies all the time. With growing trends, such as voice search, it is important to continuously improve your business according to the latest trends.
11. Skimping On Your Website
SEO professionals should know that a website fully optimized for search will always remain a priority. Web content, page names, navigation, and metadata are all critical to SEO. Small businesses should think twice before skimping on a website.
12. Treating SEO as a One-Time Task
Many small businesses see SEO as a one-time task because many have the impression that it is going to function well with the right amount of technical optimizations. To ensure you are ahead of your competition you should work on expanding the reach of their websites to accommodate highly relevant content.
13. Stuffing Keywords in Your Copy
Businesses should focus on writing content for target audiences rather than to improve Google rankings. Many times, businesses try to stuff keywords and phrases into web pages or content marketing pieces that ruin the strategy. SEO marketers must need to craft thoughtful and relevant content, and the search engines will take care of itself.
14. Not Researching Customer Questions
Look into your customer’s queries and answer them. Dig into customer-related searches as see where you are lagging. This can improve not only SEO but user experience as well.
15. Lack of Unique Keyword Targeting
Proper keyword targeting in on-page or off-page content is important. Each page should have certain keyword targets in mind and they should come across naturally in the URL, title, and content.
For more strategies on how to improve your website’s SEO, check out www.digitalpresence.today.
